« Moving here didn’t break my mom’s life apart the way it did for my dad. My dad was older and further along in his career. My mom’s family had already experienced resettlement from Malaysia and began leaving Sri Lanka earlier. My dad’s family, on the other hand, were really well established in Colombo. Starting all over with nothing was difficult, without their credentials recognized and without the family and social networks they used to rely on. »

Human rights and asylum seeker advocates are condemning a decision to employ a former Sri Lankan military officer as the acting operations manager of the Manus Island detention centre.

« It’s completely inappropriate for anyone with links to the Sri Lankan military to be in charge of the welfare and well-being of vulnerable asylum seekers, including Tamils….There’s a high likelihood that the Tamils being held there are fleeing persecution at the hands of the Sri Lankan military. This isn’t about the activities of this one man. It’s about [the] way that Australia takes care of the asylum seekers who are in its custody. The placing of an ex-military commander from a source country for refugees like Sri Lanka highlights Australia’s complete insensitivity to the very real risks and suffering that those asylum seekers are fleeing. »

« The LTTE may be well known as a terrorist organisation, but to be an LTTE supporter is a natural state of political being for many Tamilians. This explains the mass support in favour of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case being released. This was also the reason for the ‘inordinate delay’ taken over their mercy petitions; no Government at the Centre wanted to invite the wrath of the powerful regional parties in Tamil Nadu by hanging the assassins. »

The Rajapakse Administration has deployed a key architect of its post war policy towards minorities and war affected communities in Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga, through his position as Chair of the Action plan to implement the LLRC, to be the chief defender of the Government’s case to the international community in general and the UNHRC stakeholders in Geneva in particular. Government ministers have also been given their briefs and are traversing the globe to lobby member nations of the UNHRC against a third US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka. There is little doubt, that like in 2012 and 2013, another resolution on Sri Lanka would be carried by the UNHRC, decrying Sri Lanka’s post war policy trajectory.

Thus class and political domination go hand in hand. To get out of this situation of domination and be free, the masses in all classes need to first understand the nature of this ‘post-colonial grip’ and its bases carefully crafted by the political class over a period of time, how it disenfranchises and disempowers the population in the lower classes, and what to do to change the situation by transforming the self-serving political culture? By the same token, one has to carefully examine the nature of contemporary surplus extraction and public wealth appropriation processes plus the causes and conditions of poverty.

India is set to support an international investigation into alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan army in the final stages of its long civil war, government sources said on Wednesday.

Its decision to add its weight to a campaign led by Britain and the United States will be a serious blow to Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, whose government has traditionally had strong ties with India.

As the biggest regional power, India’s support will also increase the likelihood that next month’s United Nations Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva will pass a resolution calling for an international investigation.

« Pre-Independence, our island was among most peaceful lands in Asia. For some centuries there had been no large scale ethnic riots in our Island apart from the anti-Muslim riots of 1915. Even the 1915 riots lacked the scale and brutality of some of the anti- Tamil, JVP led and state led anti-JVP pogroms that we had experienced since the mid – 1950s. The distinctive feature of the post-independencepogroms is that very few of the perpetrators had been identified or punished. What we have often witnessed is either denial or justification of the violence, and the surviving victims and their loved ones being asked “to forgive and forget”. Is this possible or even desirable? »

Buddhists of Lanka need a worldview and sense of self that is not devastated by the likes of Kalinga Magha, western colonial powers and colonising politicians of the present day. They cannot be enslaved to old forms that clothe self-interest, greed, caste, hatred and parochialism. They must strive to make a living adaptation of the Buddhist message for their own time and place by returning to the path. A timeless teaching cannot be trapped in verbal formulas and hackneyed ancient ceremonies. Those are for followers – not leaders; and a Buddhist is never the follower of another person or a blind imitator of tradition.